https://www.osnews.com/story/139884/gnu-nano-gains-optional-modern-keybindings/
I almost feel like this a somewhat pointless feature. It's almost easier to just learn the default ones as opposed to adding "-modernbindings" or creating an "enano" variant/copy.
That's your opinion.
I like updating it to modern conventions. One day they become default and on another day you get rid of the old ones. The people of the future don't have to learn two sets of keybindings.
It's definitely just my opinion. Honestly did not mean to imply otherwise.
I would almost prefer them to just switch to the new keybindings by default in version 8.0.
It's definitely just my opinion. Honestly did not mean to imply otherwise.
For my opinion I usually create a comment below my post to seperate my opinion and the post itself.
On-topic: I do believe it's useful to have this switch and there's nothing stopping distros to change their default. Completely replacing the default keybindings might be surprising to long time users, but I also believe it should be done at some point. For the meantime this switch can be simply added as an alias.
Fair point. I guess this was more of a casual post, so I didn't think too much about it.
I would have preferred if they switched to new keyboard model in version 8.x by default.
I am a relatively light Linux user. Raspberry Pi headless via DietPi/Debian for NAS/Media server/torrents/PiHole and some experiments with self hosted services on major cloud services. I prefer to stick to defaults whenever possible.
I prefer to stick to defaults whenever possible.
Same goes for me.
E.g. changing vim keybindings on my local system to better suit my non-QWERTY keyboard would be annoying since they don't transfer to remote systems. That's a reason I like fish, because it's defaults are modern and useable, compared to zsh/bash which benefits strongly from plugins.
While I am usually resistant to change, I remain ever vigilant to try not be that XKCD guy
^S for unprompted save is in the default keybinds, not that I could say when it was added. (Pretty sure it wasn't a pico thing, but that leaves quite a bit of time unaccounted for.)
Muscle memory for other editors kicked in when I was editing something and did a literal slow realisation and double-take when it worked.
Now if only I could stop pressing ^W in Firefox to use nano's "whereis" to find something that'd be great.
For those unaware, it closes the current tab. Or the whole browser. Ugh.
:GASP: ^S does save! I have played myself for a fool all these years!!
Now I just have to unlearn ^X, Y, enter. . . :thisisfine:
Firefox desperately needs a way to customize keyboard shortcuts, especially to disable them. Shortkeys isn't really enough.
True. Other tools include: Ctrl+Shift+N to bring back a closed window if there's another window of the same browser instance still open, and when there isn't, there's Restore Previous Session which is accessible a couple of ways.
Neither bring back the comment that was being typed in a textbox on the page though. Guess when I usually ^W
^S works!! ...As revealed by our kind palindromic friend on the other sibling comment! Why they don't just list it on the statusbar we would never know!
creating an “enano” variant/copy
What's wrong with that?
Providing optional alternative keybindings for people who know a set of bindings from other tools makes lot of sense. I always appreciate that some tools provide these. This shows that the devs think about newcomers who are used to other set of bindings. It's optional.
BTW the blog post you posted has only 4 sentences (excluding the quote). I often dislike articles that short, but on the other hand, at least its not blown up with crap. So there is that.
My issue is that the only time I use vim or nano it's because I'm logged into some server where you're going to be stuck with the defaults anyway. I guess it's nice on your home machine, but customising a bunch of servers with your personal preferences isn't really something you can do in most work situations.
Yes, that's why I still need to learn how vi and vim in their default config work (in fact I started like that, so I know already). I wanted to get into finding as solution to this problem. Years ago I read in Reddit someone setup a keyboard macro (outside of Vim) to execute bunch of commands to setup the environment in the live session, while in Vim. At least some of the configuration can be used like that.
Otherwise, yeah this really sucks. That is not a unique problem to editors, but any software that you run with a customized local setup and with bare naked server version. If you often switch back and forth, it makes sense to just use one set of keybindings. That also is the point: For people using other tools, it makes sense to provide these alternative keybindings, so they don't need to relearn the nano specific setup.
Edit: Too many Buts reduced.
So "some other bastard system" it is, then.
That's a shame; a GNU project should be consistently GNU-like (i.e. adopt Emacs key bindings).
There's already Emacs, Vim, Kakoune, etc for that. Nano is supposed to be the system default for non-advanced users.
There are now 15 standards
No, there is and always has been just the one standard text editor.
If Emacs keybindings are good enough to be the system default for Mac users, they should be good enough for anybody.
That's a subjective take. GNU Nano has always been the default editor for so long alongside vi. But when you say that Emacs keybindings are good for Mac user - I can't help but wonder - what type of generalization is that? Do you have a source to back this claim?
Now, don't get me wrong - I love Kakoune. But no one outside of the developer community will make an effort to learn atypical text editors with chords and modes.
Every text field in MacOs supports Emacs keybindings, like Ctrl-a to go to beginning, ctrl-k to delete to end of line, etc
Given that Mac keybindings for “common special functions” (Open/Save/Cut/Copy/Paste/Find/etc.) use Command instead of Ctrl, leaving Ctrl effectively unused unless in combination with Command, this argument doesn’t hold much water.
Sure, some Emacs fan at Apple decided to add Emacs shortcuts to Cocoa controls, but that was a pretty arbitrary decision since people coming from Mac OS 9 didn’t use the Ctrl key, well, ever.
Books, periodicals, internet searches, practicing everything at home on a personal equipment until you've got it all mastered. If one can't learn that way, take courses. The way the rest of us did it. Once you've got that, you have the ability to learn anything new coming... and can hit internet forums with well formed questions, complete with context. Staying on nano/pico, there is just no excuse if you've already been heavily using linux for 3 years or more. It's an editor for those who are still in the beginning of the SELF learning phase. It should never be included in any distro's default install except for school classroom centered distros. Just because something is easy to use doesn't mean it's installed as a standard everywhere. Folks learning this as their craft need to learn how to sit in front of any Linux or Unix and use standard tools to achieve what they need to do. That means learn your Vi. Learn your Posix shells like Ksh, Bash, Zsh, Dash, not the nano of shells, fish! Learn your Python, your Perl. Learn your SysV 'isms in addition to your SystemD. Learn your csh (tcsh will do). Learn your terminal control codes. Learn your SysRq funtions. Learn your tmux, your gnu screen. Learn with and keep handy your books for awk, sed, patterns, perl. Learn your mkfs', the different filesystems and their benefits, their options and tools, how to resize. Learn your MD raid. Learn your LVM. Learn various encrypt at rest options. Learn containers. Study and remember the differences between gnu, bsd, and sysv tools like tar, cpio, find, and even ps. Books books books! Practice practice practice! Study study study!
And when you got that done, look up and see what you've missed while you were doing all that, and start in on all that new stuff. Wash, Rinse, Repeat. Never stop reading, studying, practicing, learning.
That's how. Oh, and delete nano!!!!
My point was that you can't be an advanced user without first being a non-advanced user
(and side note, I've been using Linux for over 20 years on and off... still use Nano)
I like all editors to have as many diverse sets of keybindings as possible. Sadly most apps don't, which is a main reason why I never bothered to properly learn emacs bindings, as I wouldn't be able to use them anywhere else.
People who only use the terminal to edit a few config files are usually fine with nano. Even more so with these new keybindings.
For more involved edits an editor like VSCode is usually more useful anyway.
For me vim works well, but I've already taken the time to learn its basic usage.
Ships with Gentoo by default, since you actually need a nongraphical editor there and nano is easier to learn than vi or emacs.
